SPIRIT OF THE AGE 
SERIES : NO. II. ROBERT 
LOUIS STEVENSON: BY 
E. BLANTYRE SIMPSON 




AS ADVOCATE 



ROBERT LOUIS 

STEVENSON 



BY 

E. BLANTYRE 
SIMPSON 




JOHN W. LUCE & CO. 

BOSTON AND LONDON 

19 6 



rA 



f<^^\'^'- 



Copyright, 1906, by 

JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY 

Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



^S 



All rights reserved 



LIBRARY of congress/ 

Two CoDles Received 

JUN 211906 

Cooyriglit Entry 

CLASS XXC. No, 

COPY B, 



Lakevlew Press 

Boston and South Franingham 

U. 8. A. 



^ ILLUSTRATIONS 

5 

F 

• 1875 

i i*5 ADVOCATE 
K frontispiece ■/ 



^AT EDINBURGH STUDENT 

page thirty-tnuo 

THE TELLER OF TALES 

page forty-eight 

1892 

PORTRAIT PAINTED 'BY COUNT NERLI 
IN SAMOA 

Reproduced by kind permission of Mrs. Turnbull 

page sixty-four 



SPIRIT OF THE AGE 
SERIES 

The publishers desire to announce that 
it is their purpose to comprise in this series 
a collection of little books uniform in general 
style and appearance to the present volume 
and having for their subjects men and women, 
whose work and influence, in whatever field 
of literature or art was their chosen one, may 
be said to faintly reflect the spirit or tenden- 
cies of cultivated thought at the present time. 

The treatment of the subject matter will 
not be conventional, the chief aim being to 
present to the readers a living, marching per- 
sonality breathing with the individuality 
characteristic of the person. 

Volume I of this series is Whistler 

by Haldane Macfall 

Volume II, Robert Louis Stevenson 

by Eve Blantyre Simpson 

Additional volumes to be announced shortly. 



A spirit all sunshine, graceful from 
every gladness, useful because 
bright." Carlyle. 




The mother of Robert Louis 
Stevenson, when asked to in- 
scribe a motto on a guest list, 
wrote : — 

" The world is so full of a number of 
things, 
I am sure we should all be happy as 

kings." 

''That," she said, ''includes 
the whole gospel of R. L. S." 
These lines are certainly a con- 
cise statement of the spirit in 
which her son undertook to ex- 
pound the benefits to be derived 
from " performing our petty 
round of irritating concerns and 
duties with laughter and kind 
faces." Before he could walk 
steadily, it had been discovered 



FORESIGHTS 

he was heavily handicapped by 
the burden of ill-health. Still 
the good fairy who came to his 
christening endowed him with 
" sweet content," a gift which 
carried him triumphantly 
through all hampering difficul- 
ties. He never faltered in the 
task he set himself — the task of 
happiness. He began to preach 
his gospel as a child. He would 
not have his tawdry toy sword 
disparaged even by his father. 
^'I tell you," he said, "the 
sword is of gold, the sheath of 
silver, and the boy who has it is 
quite contented." In the same 
manner he transformed a cod- 
dling shawl into a wrap fit for a 
soldier on a night march. To 
the end of his days he was eager 
to be happy. We are told 

" Two men looked out from prison 
bars ; 
One saw mud, the other stars." 

10 



OF THE MAN 

When bodily ailments held 
Stevenson as a captive in bonds, 
his keen sight pierced through 
the obstructions which held 
him caged. We are not left 
in doubt, when we read his 
books, as to whether his gaze 
was earthwards or to heaven's 
distant lamps. He taught 
others to see with his clear 
vision, and he expounded his 
gospel in so taking a manner, 
even if the import of it had 
savoured more of mud than 
stars, it would have been studied 
for its style. He had the true 
artist soul within him. He 
wished to create or represent 
what came within the range of 
those brilliant dark eyes of his, 
so, with infinite care and effort, 
he strove to attune his words to 
the even cadence and harmony 
with which he wished to amaze 

11 



FORESIGHTS 

us, for, as A. J. Balfour said, 
"he was a man of the finest 
and most deHcate imagination, 
a style which, for grace and 
suppleness, for its power of be- 
ing at once turned to any pur- 
pose which the author desired, 
has seldom been matched." 
It is difficult for those who 
knew him before he had, by 
pure hard work, won his way 
to fame, to realise how one 
physically so fragile, of so light- 
somely versatile and whimsical 
a nature, apparently so ready to 
be diverted from the main high- 
road by a desire to explore any 
brambly lane, had in him the 
deliberate goal-winning gait of 
the tortoise. His stubborn te- 
nacity of purpose he owed to 
his antecedents. The Scot's in- 
alienable prerogative of pedi- 
gree exercised an influence 

12 



OF THE MAN 

over him, though he appeared 
as a foreign ingraft upon his 
Scotch family tree. In his rec- 
ord of his father's kinsfolk, 
A Family of 'Engineers^ and in 
many of his essays, he engages 
his readers' attention by con- 
fiding to them his own and his 
forebears' history. ''I am a 
rogue at egotism myself ; and 
to be plain, I have rarely or 
never liked any man who was 
not," he says. 

This Benjamin of Edinburgh's 
literary sons, the youngest, not 
the least, was born in the very 
middle of last century, 1850. 
This babe, that was to do Edin- 
burgh honour yet, had been 
named after his two grand- 
fathers, Robert Lewis. He was 
a mixture of both, the inevit- 
able result of their diverse qual- 
ities, which he inherited. The 

13 



FORESIGHTS 

Robert (a name he was seldom 
known by in his youth) was from 
the Stevenson side. They 
were a race of men of sterling 
metal, who lit our Northern 
Lights, and from the besieging 
sea wrung footholds for har- 
bours. From them Robert 
Louis Stevenson inherited that 
tenacity of purpose which made 
him write and rewrite chapters 
till his phrases concisely ex- 
pressed his meaning, and toil- 
somely labour till his work was 
perfected. His minister grand- 
father he etched with the *' Old 
Manse." All his mother's 
people, the Balfours, were of a 
sanguine, hopeful strain, retain- 
ing an elasticity of spirit which 
never lessened under the bur- 
den of years. Stevenson writes 
of "that wise youth, my 
uncle," who was a grey-bearded 

U 



OF THE MAN 

doctor when his nephew thus 
referred to him. So from the 
daughter of the Herd of Men 
at Colinton he inherited his 
perennial youthfulness. '* He 
was ever the spirit of boy- 
hood," says Barrie, ''tugging 
at the skirts of this old world, 
and compelling it to come back 
and play." 

It was well for the boy that his 
mother had gifted him with her 
hopeful nature, for his father 
had Celtic traits in his charac- 
ter, and was oppressed with a 
morbid sense of his own un- 
worthiness. It is Carlyle who 
vouches for the fact " that 
wondrous is the strength of 
cheerfulness, altogether past 
calculation its power of endur- 
ance." Little store of bodily 
vigour had Robert Lewis ; but 
with his buoyant, enthusiastic, 

15 



FORESIGHTS 

inquisitive spirit he accomplish- 
ed a strong man's task, '' weav- 
ing his garlands when his mood 
was gay, mocking his sorrows 
with a solemn jest." This 
treasured only son, worshipped 
by his doting parents and his 
nurse, Alison Cunningham, 
who was a second mother to 
him, reports himself to have 
been a good child. He also 
says he had a covenanting child- 
hood. In the mid-Victorian 
era, a stricter discipline reigned 
over nurseries in Scotland's 
capital than now. "The ser- 
viceable pause " in the week's 
work on Sunday was not with- 
out real benefits, for the chil- 
dren of these times, if sermons 
were long and the Sabbath de- 
void of toys, learned to sit still 
and to endure, and very useful 
lessons they were to R. L. S. 

16 



OF THE MAN 

and others. Despite being an 
extra model little soul, ''emi- 
nently religious," he says, he 
was much like other children. 
His nurse tells how, during one 
of the many feverish, wakeful 
nights he suffered from, when 
he lay wearying for the carts 
coming (a sign to him of morn- 
ing), she read to him for hours 
at his request the Bible. He 
fell asleep, soothed by her kind 
voice, to awake when the sun 
was bright on the window pane. 
Again he commanded, " Read 
to me, Cummie." " And what 
chapter would my laddie 
like?" she asked. " Why, it's 
daylight now," he answered ; 
"I'm not afraid any longer; 
put away the Bible, and go on 
with Ballantyne's story." 
" I am one of the few people 
in the world who do not forget 

17 



FORESIGHTS 

their own lives," he boasted. 
His Garden of Verses testifies to 
the truth of this statement. 
When he was a man over thirty, 
he bridged the gulf of years, 
and wrote of the golden days 
of childhood. Not only do 
the little people joy to near his 
piping, but those who sit in the 
elders' seat hearken to these 
happy songs of merry cheer 
coming to them as echoes from 
the well-nigh forgotten past. 
His father often sat by his sick- 
bed, and beguiled his small son 
from fears and pains by tales 
"of ship-wreck on outlying 
iron skerries' pitiless breakers, 
and great sea-lights, clothed in 
language apt, droll and empha- 
tic." His mother and Cummie 
read to him day and night. 
Thus early the instinct of auth- 
orship was fired within him. 

18 



OF THE MAN 

One evening the young Steven- 
sonrealisedthatthe printedpage 
was intelligible to him. It was 
as if a rock that barred his en- 
trance into the cave of treasure 
had melted, or swung back at 
his command. Till then Louis 
had been keen, like other 
youngsters, on adopting many 
professions when he grew up. 
Soldiering, even in the Crim- 
ean War time, did not appeal 
to the girlishly gentle little 
chap, for, as he shrewdly re- 
marked, he neither wanted to 
kill anybody nor be killed him- 
self. When he learned to read, 
he saw before him all the rows of 
books which he was told had 
finer stirring stories in them 
than even those his father told 
him, and he resolved he, too, 
would be a maker of tales. 
Those wide apart but penetrat- 

19 



FORESIGHTS 

ing eyes of his had caught sight 
of an ideal guiding star to fol- 
low, viz., Literature. His ju- 
venile ambition to be a " Leerie 
licht the lamp" faded. To 
reach the gleam which had 
enamoured him, he knew he 
must build with care and pati- 
ence, like his family of engi- 
neers, a tower to enclose or a 
ladderto reach tothiswill-o'-the- 
wisp which inveigled him up- 
ward. His mind teemed with 
ideas; but he saw he would 
have to serve an apprenticeship 
to learn to weave smoothly to- 
gether the web of his fancy, 
till, in his verbal fabric, he had 
the charm of all the muses 
flowering in a single word. 
He describes to us how he be- 
came a skilled artificer with his 
pen, and how with obstinate 
persistence he taught himself 

20 



OF THE MAN 

daintiness of diction. In his 
first book of travels he men- 
tions how the branch of a tree 
caught him, and the flooded 
Oise bereft him of his canoe. 
''On my tomb, if ever I have 
one," he wrote, " I mean to 
get these words inscribed, He 
clung to his paddle y The pad- 
dle he chose was his pen. It 
was the motive power which 
forwarded him along the river 
of life, through shoals and rap- 
ids. When but a wee toddling 
bairn, he drew his nurse aside 
and commanded her to write, 
as he had a story to tell. He 
dictated to his mother, too, 
when a boy of six, an essay on 
Moses. As a housebound child, 
he had to amuse himself. 
Skelt's dramas were then his 
delight ; but the life of every 
child is a prophecy for those 

21 



FORESIGHTS 

who know how to interpret it. 
His mother was prescient, and 
fore-told her white-faced Louis 
had the light of genius in those 
windows of the soul — the eyes. 
'* Talent," she knew, " was the 
result of human labor and cul- 
ture." He dreamed, when 
but four, he "heard the noise 
of pens writing." She took it 
and his childish " Songstries " 
he sung as an earnest of his 
future. 

Louis' father, despite being, 
like Dr. John Brown's Rab, 
''fu' o' seriousness," had odd 
whims, among others, an objec- 
tion to schools and lessons, so 
he raised no objection to his 
son's regulation school-days be- 
ing intermittent. When barely 
in his teens, Stevenson was or- 
dered South, and spent two 
winters abroad. He was a pu- 

22 



OF THE MAN 

pil at Edinburgh Academy for 
a few years. Andrew Lang was 
there at the same time ; but, he 
explains, the future Tusitala, — 
" the lover of children, the tell- 
er of tales, giver of counsel, 
and dreams, awonder, a world's 
delight," — and he did not 
meet there, for Louis was " but 
a little whey-faced urchin, the 
despicable member of some 
lower class," when his future 
brother author was " an elder- 
ly boy of seventeen." The 
pity was that the cosseted only 
son never rubbed against his 
compatriot children in the dis- 
cipline of the play-fields, but 
in some of his summer holidays 
he tasted of the doubtful pleas- 
ures of lantern-bearing and 
other boyish '' glories of exist- 
ence." 
When the lad was seventeen, 

23 



FORESIGHTS 

his parents leased Swanston 
Cottage, which became their 
summer home, and a big factor 
in their boy's education. It is 
a spot pecuHarly secluded, to 
be within sight and sound of 
Edinburgh, lying hidden in the 
lap of the hills, sheltered " frae 
nirly nippin' Eas'lan' breeze 
and haar o' seas." It was there 
Stevenson began deliberately 
to educate himself to become 
the Master Stylist — the " Virgil 
of prose" of his contemporaries. 
These Pentlands were to him 
always the hills of home. He 
lifted his eyes to them from the 
old manse of Colinton, when 
he played there in his grand- 
father's garden. He longing- 
ly, in gaps between the tall, 
grey houses, looked for their 
familiar outline when winter 
prisoned him in Auld Reekie. 

24 



OF THE MAN 

These pastoral hills, with their 
sweeps of heathy moorlands, 
appear from first to last in his 
works. Two of his initial 
Memories and Portraits depict 
his hill-folk neighbors, the 
Shepherd and the Gardener. 
It was at a church " atween the 
muckle Pentland's knees " that 
Archie Weir of Hermiston not- 
ed young Kirsty, and that same 
"little cruciform place" was 
the scene of his ^^ petit poe,me en 
prose ^^'' where we can all spend 
a peaceful " Lowden Sabbath 
morning" with his "living 
Scotch " sounding in our ears. 
However far away Louis Stev- 
enson roved, there was mirrored 
on the tablets of his memory 
his own country, its speech, its 
very atmosphere. He wrote a 
New Arabian Nights, but from 
the old (he tells us howhis minis- 

25 



FORESIGHTS 

ter grandfather envied him his 
first reading thereof) he had ac- 
quired the secret of the magic 
carpet, and could be trans- 
ported at will from the tropics 
back to where the curlews and 
the plovers wailed and swooped 
above the whins and the heather 
on his hills of sheep. 



STEVENSON'S 

APPRENTICESHIP 



In his early days, Louis was 
sociable, pleased when he met 
compatriot children, ready to 
be dressed and go to parties. 
But after he left school, his 
mood changed. He had been 
completely sheltered from 
rebuffs, so, when he stood in 
the "palace porch of life," 
and the peculiar accents of his 
mind were jeered at, he, who 
had never tasted of a whipping, 
felt the smart of humankind, 
and suffered sorely from 
"maladies incident to only 
sons." In the "coiled per- 
plexities of youth " he " sor- 
rowed, sobbed, and feared" 

27 



STEVENSON^S 

alone. Blackford's uncultured 
breast had been meet nurse for 
Sir Walter when he roamed a 
truant boy, but further south of 
the becastled capital, topmost 
AUermuir or steep Caerketton 
became the cradle of the next 
poet and master of Romance 
that Edinburgh reared. There, 
in woody folds of the hills, he 
found, as he said, " bright is 
the ring of words," and there 
he taught himself to be the 
right man to ring them. When 
Swanston became the Steven- 
sons' summer home, the un- 
disciplined Robert kicked with 
his fullest vigour against what 
he called the Bastille of Civilisa- 
tion and the bowing down be- 
fore ''the bestial Goddesses, 
Comfort and Respectability." 
He was loudly rebellious, and 
too impatient to follow the 

28 



APPRENTI CES HIP 

ordinary rules of life or the 
sage advice, " Jowk and let the 
jaw gae by." 

An impression has arisen, be- 
cause of his revolt in these years 
against convention and creeds, 
that he was thwarted and un- 
appreciated in his home and its 
surroundings. On the contrary, 
he was at liberty to indulge his 
Bohemian tastes and do much 
as he listed. His father gave 
him a seemingly inadequate 
allowance. Yet Thomas Stev- 
enson was not a miserly man. 
He begged his son to go to his 
tailor's, for he disapproved of 
the youth's scuflFy, mounte- 
bankish appearance. He sup- 
plied him with an allowance 
for travel — in fact, R. L. S. had 
all his bills paid, and his own 
study in a very hospitable home. 
R. L. S. owned books, and 

29 



STEVENSON'S 

jewels were the only things he 
felt tempted to buy. The £ 1 
a month allowance, when he 
left school, raised soon after to 
^82 a year, was to keep the 
money from dropping out of 
that hole in the pocket of his 
ragged jacket, which never 
seemed to get sewed up. Books 
he had in plenty, but his parents 
naturally did not treat him to 
strings of flashing stones to 
wear over his shabby velvet 
coat, or twine round his batter- 
ed straw hat. His money af- 
fairs, like the table of Weir 
of Hermiston, were likely all 
his life "just mismanaged." 
By the time he settled in Sa- 
moa, his literary earnings were 
thousands a year; and by then 
his quiet-living, hard-working 
father was dead, leaving an 
ample fortune. Still he seemed 

30 



APPRENTI CESHIP 

haunted by fear of lack of 
means. 

Louis' love and admiration for 
his father was deep and sincere. 
At his home, when guests gath- 
ered round the engineer's ta- 
ble, the boy, with his eyes spark- 
ling, listened to his father's 
"strange, humorous vein of 
talk," then glanced round with 
a smile of expectation to see 
how much others appreciated 
their host's well-told tales. 
"My father was always my 
dearest," he wrote. This was 
a high certificate of apprecia- 
tion, when we remember he 
had the most devoted of moth- 
ers. It hurt the son to the 
quick to deal his " dearest " a 
staggering blow, and decline 
to follow his hereditary profes- 
sion. Louis had tried to be an 
engineer. He liked the swing- 

31 



STEVENSON^S 

ing, smoking seas on which 
they struggled for a site for 
sheltering masonry. As in the 
case of other Stevensons, the 
romance of the work was wel- 
come to him, but the office 
stool frightened him. When 
the would-be author had refus- 
ed to follow in his kinsmen's 
footsteps, he promised to study 
as an advocate to satisfy his 
father, who urged his son to 
follow a recognised profession. 
Owing to his easy-going school- 
ing and lack of a settled course 
of study, the law classes were 
excellent training for the 
erratic, mercurial-notioned 
youth. Stevenson had the 
good fortune in 1869 to be 
elected a member of the Spec- 
ulative, the famed Debating So- 
ciety where Jeffrey first met 
Scott. There Stevenson en- 

32 




AN EDINBURGH STUDENT 



APPRENTICESHI P 

countered his contemporaries 
in years and social standing, 
his superiors in debate, and he, 
"the lean, ugly, idle, unpopu- 
lar student," as he calls him- 
self, enjoyed " its atmosphere 
of good-fellowship, its vivid 
and varied interests, its tradi- 
tions of honourable labour and 
success," " Speculative even- 
ings," says R. L. S., "form 
pretty salient milestones on our 
intellectual journey." He had 
gripped a deal of the founda- 
tions of his hereditary trade 
when seemingly but a consist- 
ent idler. He mastered the 
intricacies of law, and took to 
the abhorred office stool so as 
to learn the better the workings 
of its slow machinery. He tells 
us he only obtained the mastery 
of his pen by toiling faithfully, 
but inborn in him was the art 

33 



STEVENSON'S 

of talking. Even as a petti- 
coated child, we read he gestic- 
ulated to aid his glib tongue. 
W. E. Henley (whose acquaint- 
ance Louis made about 1875, 
and who helped Stevenson with 
his chary praise and frank criti- 
cism) says of his friend, "He 
radiates talk. He will discourse 
with you of morals, music, 
marbles, men, manners, meta- 
physics, medicine, mangold- 
wurzel, with equal insight into 
essentials and equal pregnancy 
and felicity of utterance." 
Along with this ready affluence 
of speech, the youth had what 
good talkers often lack, viz., 
the patience to hearken to 
others. Stevenson shone best 
in what he called a little com- 
mittee of talkers, though his 
father and he used to argue a 
question together for days ; but, 

34 



APPRENTI CE S H I P 

in the Speculative, he had at 
first to be a listener. A candid 
fellow-member says, " I cannot 
remember that Stevenson was 
ever anything as a speaker. He 
was nervous and ineffective, 
and had no power of debate ; 
but his papers were success- 
ful." In one of his essays, 
touching on this select assem- 
blage, Louis sketches what the 
editor of the History of the 
Speculative Society^ just pub- 
lished, calls "a little Dutch 
picture ; it focuses in vivid col- 
our the associations which rise 
in the memory at the name of 
the Spec. — the stately old room 
aglow with many candles, the 
books, the portraits, the pious 
commemoration of the dead, — 
famous men and our fathers 
that begat us." "Stevenson," 
Mr Dickson goes on to say, "is 

35 



STEVENSON^S 

the most famous man of letters 
who has belonged to the So- 
ciety since Scott. No more 
interesting personality has ever 
been of our number, and no 
one has in the public eye been 
more closely identified with the 
Society." "Oh, I do think 
the Spec, is about the best 
thing in Edinburgh," Louis 
exclaims, and twice he was 
President of the "worshipful 
society." 

A contemporary of Stevenson's, 
Sheriff Guthrie, wrote in 1899, 
"I knew Louis first in the 
Speculative Society ; second, as 
a fellow student in the Univer- 
sity Law Classes ; third, being 
called to the Scottish Bar about 
the same time as a brother-in- 
law ; and last, as a friend with 
many interests in common. In 
the Speculative he spoke fre- 

36 



APPRENTICESH IP 

quently, and read some papers. 
We recognised his brilliancy, 
and we delighted in his vivacity; 
but we misread the horoscope 
of his future. We voted him 
a light horseman, lacking two 
essentials for success — dil- 
igence and health. We won- 
dered where he had got the 
deftness and rhythm of his 
style, not knowing that the 
labour out of which it was 
evoked was of itself sufficient 
to refute our estimate of his 
powers of work. As to his 
health, we forgot behind that 
slender, angular frame was not 
only a father's iron constitution 
and a mother's nervous vitality, 
but his own cheerful spirit and 
indomitable will." The 
Sheriff, in this letter to me, re- 
calls several reminiscences of 
Stevenson — some in a playful 

37 



STEVENSON'S 

or contrariwise vein, and 
another memory illustrates, he 
says, "the sweet reasonable- 
ness which mingled with his 
wayward Bohemianism"; but 
space does not allow me to 
quote more than how, "It 
seems but yesterday that I met 
Louis in the Parliament House, 
and said I heard he had got a 
case. And I seem to see the 
twinkle in his eye and the toss 
of his arms as he answered, 
'Yes, my boy, you'll see how 
I'll stick in, now that I've tasted 
blood.'" 

Louis' mother showed this 
friend, Mr. Guthrie, a succes- 
sion of her boy's photographs, 
ending in wig and gown as an 
advocate. "That is what I call 
from Baby to Bar," she said; 
and then added, beginning with 
a smile, and ending with a 

38 



APPRENTI CES H IP 

break in her voice, " I said to 
Louis once that the next collec- 
tion would be from Bar to 
Baronet, and he replied, ' It 
will be from Bar to Burial.'" 
Except at the "dear old 
Spec," he mixed little his 
equals in Edinburgh. As a 
writer in Blackwood points out, 
at the period he had grown in- 
to swallow-tails, Edinburgh 
was by no means devoid of in- 
tellectual company, which even 
a famed Robert Louis need not 
have despised. But he abhor- 
red constraint and codes of 
rules. He was a born advent- 
urer and practical experiment- 
ist in life, and he explains he 
spent much of his time scrap- 
ing acquaintance with all classes 
of men and womenkind. 
His insatiable curiosity made 
him thirst to taste of the bitter as 

39 



STEVENSON^S 

well as the sweet, to be pricked 
by the thorn as well as smell 
the rose. He was quick to see 
the humorous side of a tale or 
episode, but he was tenderly 
sensitive to ridicule. When he 
appeared among his legal 
brothers-in-law in the Parlia- 
ment House, a wit there among 
the unemployed advocates in 
the old hall called him the 
Gifted Boy. He winced under 
the laugh, and fled from "the 
interminable patter of legal 
feet." He had cultivated 
notoriety by his shabby dress 
and lank locks. He did not 
realise, as an American says, 
"If you look as if you had 
slept in your clothes most men 
will jump to the conclusion that 
you have, and you will never 
get to know them well enough 
to explain that your head is so 

40 



APPRENTICESHIP 

full of noble thoughts that you 
haven't time to bother with 
the dandrufif on your shoul- 
ders." In a corridor in the 
Parliament House, where the 
men called to the Bar keep 
open-mouthed boxes for docu- 
ments to be slipped in, one 
bore on its plate the inscription 
R. L. Stevenson. When that 
alien-looking advocate with 
unsuspected gifts had cast off 
the wig and gown, and had 
busied himself for years filling 
up reams of paper with his 
thoughts and studies on people, 
places, and things, sightseers 
going through the Courts 
would be shown this unused 
box, which remained so empty 
while those around it of his old 
rivals at the Spec, were full, as 
they were scaling the heights 
which lead to titles and the 

41 



STEVENSON'S 

Bench. 

Stevenson wrote of Edinburgh 
and her climate in a carping 
spirit, nevertheless he ac- 
corded due praise to her unsur- 
passed beauty. ''No place so 
brands a man," he declared; 
and, in his turn, Stevenson 
left his brand on the romantic 
city of his birth, for now no book 
on Scotland's capital is written 
without mention of the haunts 
and homes of that changeling- 
looking son of hers. The 
door-plate of 17 Heriot Row 
bore the inscription of R. L. 
Stevenson, Advocate. No 
blue-bag laden clerk dropped 
briefs then into its letter-box. 
In one of its sun-facing draw- 
ing-room windows there stood 
a big Australian vine, carefully 
tended and trained. It was 
behind it, in the far window, 

42 



APPRENTICESHIP 

the eighteen-year-old lad sat 
when, in the winter's gloamin', 
Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, calling 
on his mother, was startled by 
his voice joining in the con- 
versation. The visitor says, "I 
listened in perplexity and 
amasement. Who was this son 
who talked as Charles Lamb 
wrote ? this young Heine with 
the Scotch accent ? When I 
came away the unseen conver- 
ser came down with me to the 
front door to let me out. As 
he opened it, the light of the 
gas lamp outside (' For we are 
very lucky with a lamp before 
the door,' he says) fell on 
him, and I saw a slender, 
brown, long-haired lad, with 
great dark eyes, a brilliant 
smile, and a gentle, deprecating 
bend of the head. I asked 
him to come and see us. He 

43 



STEVENSON^S 

said, 'Shall I come to-mor- 
row? ' " He called next day, 
for Louis grasped at anything 
or any person that he felt 
drawn to. He took part in 
their theatricals, but otherwise 
eschewed social functions in 
Edinburgh. An old friend of 
his father's asked him to come 
to fill a gap at his table, though 
his own son had informed him 
Louis never went to prear- 
ranged feasts. Louis himself re- 
plied to this invitation : " C. is 
textually correct, only there 
are exceptions everywhere to 
prove the rule. I do not hate 
dining at your house. At sev- 
en, on Wednesday, his temples 
wreathed with some appropri- 
ate garland, you will behold 
the victim come smiling to the 
altar." The last words are 
characteristic of his attitude 

44 



APPRENTI CESHIP 

when he was lured into so- 
ciety, — he went a willing vic- 
tim, with no affectation of 
martyrdom. The few who met 
him in Edinburgh drawing- 
rooms found him prodigal of 
tongue, somewhat puzzling 
with his wholesale enthusi- 
asms, absurd flights of fancy, 
theories he had to propound, 
and ever ready to change like 
a chameleon to tone with his 
surroundings. The spritish, 
fantastic youth impressed those 
he encountered, even when he 
was one of the unfledged eag- 
lets hatched in the ancient 
eyrie of his precipitous city, 
whom Browning tells us are 
not counted '' till there is a 
rush of wings, and lo I they are 
flown . " * ' What was so taking 
in him, and how is one to 
analyse that dazzling surface of 

45 



STEVENSON^S 

pleasantry, that changeful, 
shining humour, wit, wisdom, 
recklessness, beneath which 
beat the most kind and tolerant 
of hearts ? " asks Andrew Lang. 
But not only through the mag- 
netism of his personal presence 
did he attract even strangers, 
but through his pen has he 
held in thrall all the reading 
public who liked his work. 
'' He has put into his books a 
great deal of all that went to 
the making of his life," wrote 
his cousin, "though he had 
the art of confiding a good 
deal, but not telling every- 
thing." It would have been 
interesting to see, if Stevenson 
had taken it into his elfin- 
locked head to learn to shine in 
debate, and, instead of incu- 
bating a budding Scott, as he 
said, "the Spec." had trained 

46 



APPRENTI CESHIP 

an able advocate, if the glamour 
of his personality would have 
extended to the judges, and 
made him, with his well-chosen 
words, a successful pleader. 
The boards of the Parliament 
House were too well worn a 
road for so tramp-blooded a 
man. The tune ''Over the 
Hills and Far Away" was for 
ever humming in his head. 
He left the venerable city of 
his birth, which he vowed he 
must always think of as home, 
and steered a course on his 
way to fame "far ayont the 
muckle sea" which led him 
from the Bar to Burial. 



ACROSS THE SEAS 



As an advocate, Stevenson 
found ample time to pursue 
his chosen profession of letters, 
for, during the winters in 
Edinburgh, he wrote much, 
and gradually his essays, etc., 
appeared in magazines, and are 
now gathered into happily 
named volumes. He spent the 
long vacations, when the Courts 
had risen, abroad, mostly fre- 
quenting an artist-colony in 
Fontainebleau. At that time 
he was full of a project, in 
company with some congenial 
spirits, to form a peripatetic 
club, buy a barge, and glide 
leisurely through Europe by 

48 




TELLER OF TALES 



ACROSS THE SEAS 

calm waterways. He had gone 
yachting one summer with a 
sea-loving brother advocate up 
the west coast of Scotland. 
The memory of that trip in- 
habited his mind, and he made 
his hero, David Balfour, when 
^^ Kidnapped^'' %2l[\ by the self- 
same islands and seas. Louis 
was persuaded by his boating 
friend, the following season, 
to embark with him on a canoe 
trip through Belgium ; and the 
log of that tour became im- 
mortalised as An Inland Voyage^ 
Stevenson's first book. His 
travels did not end when he 
left his frail craft at Pontoise, 
for, returning to Gretz, on the 
skirts of Fontainebleau, he first 
met his future wife, and that 
led a few years later to his fol- 
lowing her to San Francisco, 
when she was free to remarry. 

49 



AC ROSS 

He crossed the Atlantic and 
America as an Emigrant. That 
mode of Hfe proved too hard 
for him. He had sailed and 
paddled without hurt in his 
fleet and footless beast of bur- 
den, the Arethusa. In the en- 
suing year (1877), he travelled 
" Through the Cevennes with a 
Donkey,''^ slept under starry 
skies, or camped in plumping 
rain. Often at homehe buckled 
on his knapsack and tramped 
along the open road, but in 
these trips, as in his two longer 
outdoor journeys, he had the 
heavens above him. The Em- 
igrant was crowded with his 
fellows, so Louis arrived sick 
and sorry on the other side of 
the Atlantic, where he had to 
support himself, having left his 
home against his father's 
wishes. The rising author 

50 



THE SEAS 

found his market value in 
America low-priced, and his 
curiosity as to how it felt to be 
ill and penniless was satisfied. 
After his marriage in 1880, 
Louis, his wife, and her son 
became ^'' Silverado Squatters ^^'^ 
which proved a happier vent- 
ure, both for purse and con- 
stitution, than being an " Ama- 
teur Emigrant " ; also, Mr Stev- 
enson generously settled an in- 
come on his son. 
In a perpetual pursuit of health, 
the writer and his hostages to 
fortune rambled from the 
snows of Switzerland to the 
vineyards of France, and final- 
ly settled for three years at 
Bournemouth. Stevenson's 
undermined health grew worse; 
but he laboured on at his work, 
from his sick bed. Some sum- 
mers he spent in Scotland, and 

51 



ACROSS 

at Braemar wrote Treasure Is- 
land : then yekyll and Hyde 
brought him notoriety. He 
was anxious to return to his 
Alma Mater, and be there a 
Professor of History. A house 
in the cup-like dell of Colinton, 
where every twig had a choris- 
ter, would have sheltered him 
from the purgatorial climate ; 
and the College, like the 
Courts, allowed long vacations, 
spring and summer, to journey 
oH to bask in the South. But 
this plan, like the barge one, 
came to naught, for he was not 
elected. The tales of tropic 
islands in the South Seas — 
"beautiful places green for 
ever, perfect climate, perfect 
shapes of men and women with 
red flowers in their hair and 
nothing to do but study oratory 
and etiquette, sit in the sun and 

52 



THE SEAS 

pick up the fruits as they 
fall," — remained in his tena- 
cious memory. A guest at his 
father's in 1874 spoke of them, 
and the young Stevenson had 
stored the description away in 
his mind, to be unearthed when 
he willed, as was his habit. 
When first he heard of those 
favored spots, he had two 
anchors which kept him bound 
to Edinburgh — his parents. 
The good engineer died in 
1887 ; and the other anchor, 
his mother, he found could be 
lifted, and became the best of 
ballast. When he elected to 
become a world wanderer, she 
left her Edinburgh home and, 
without hesitation, went off 
with her son and his household 
when they turned their backs 
on Europe in 1887. Her 
journal to her sister tells of 

53 



ACROSS 

these travels ^^ From Saranac to 
Marquesas.'''' She simply but 
racily describes their course, 
which ended in the cruise on 
the Casco. In her book we en- 
joy genuine glimpses of the 
author, not so much as the man 
who has written himself into 
fame, but her happy-tempered, 
hero-hearted, eager-minded 
boy, who for forty-five years 
was all the world to her. The 
invigorating cold of the 
Adirondacks had its drawbacks, 
as had Davos ; and Stevenson, 
who, a few years before had 
felt the sharp pinch of pov- 
erty at San Francisco, now 
chartered from there a ship of 
his own, and sailed away out of 
the Golden Gate, on his South 
Sea Odyssey, to those islands 
he had heard of years before, 
little thinking, as he listened 

54 



THE SEAS 

" till he was sick with desire to 
go there," that talk was to be 
as a sign-post to him where to 
travel to. '' For Louis' sake," 
his mother explains in her racy 
journal letters, speaking of 
having chartered the Casco, "I 
can't but be glad, for his heart 
has so long been set upon it, it 
must surely be good for his 
health to have such a desire 
granted." Louis warned his 
mother years before she had a 
nomad for a son, but she had 
never objected, and sat knitting 
on deck, well content not to be 
"in turret pent," but to go 
forth with the bright sword she 
had forged. " She adapted 
herself," her brother says, " to 
her strange surroundings, went 
about barefoot, found no heat 
too great for her, and at an age 
when her sisters at home were 

55 



ACROSS 

old ladies, learnt to ride I " 
After many wanderingsthrough 
the warm ocean waters, with 
"green days in forest and 
blue days at sea," the yachters 
finally saw Samoa, and to the 
author it was the El Dorado of 
his dreams. ^^ When the Casco 
cast anchor," he avers, " my 
soul went down with these 
moorings, whence no windless 
may extract nor any diver fish 
it up." It was indeed a unique 
experience for one of the mas- 
ter workers of the world, one 
whose subtle mintage of words 
had made his readers his 
friends, to settle in an utter- 
most isle of the Pacific. He 
throve there, and was able to 
enjoy the flavour of the life of 
adventure he had craved for, 
and to look into the bright face 
of danger. He built for him- 

56 



THE SEAS 

self a palace in the wild named 
Vailima. From Edinburgh 
came out the familiar furniture 
he had been brought up among, 
which had been the stage scen- 
ery of his chimney-corner days, 
when the back bed-room chairs 
became a ship, and the sofa- 
back was his hunter's camp. 
At Vailima he, like Ibsen's 
Peer Gynt, received " a race 
gift from his childhood's 
home." He had in olden 
times played at being a minis- 
ter like his grandfather, to wile 
away a toyless Sunday. When 
he grew into his unorthodox 
dark shirt and velvet-jacket 
stage, he had been a rebellious, 
rather atheistical youth ; but at 
Samoa, maybe to please his 
truly good, uncanting mother, 
or the sight of the belongings 
from his old home, made him 

57 



ACROSS 

bethink himself of his father's 
reverent conducting of family- 
worship. He would have the 
same, but set to work and com- 
posed prayers for himself. 
Beautifully worded they are, 
full of his gospel of kindliness 
and gladness, and he read them 
with effective fervour in the 
hall of Vailima, with his be- 
tartaned servants gathered 
round. These devotional exer- 
cises of his have been quoted 
by the " unco guid " to make 
him into what Henley severely 
styled " a Seraph in Chocolate, 
a barley-sugar effigy of a real 
man." The religious faith of 
Stevenson was the same as Ben 
Adhem's in Leigh Hunt's 
poem, who, when he found his 
name was not among those who 
loved the Lord, cheerily asked 
the angel to write him as one 

58 



THE SEAS 

who loved his fellow-men. 
The heavenly messenger re- 
turned 

"And showed the names whom love 
of God had blessed," 
And " lo ! Ben Adhem's led all the 
rest." 

To Stevenson, throughout his 
life, all the world was truly a 
stage. He went gaily along 
playing his part, and when he 
came to Samoa, he, on whose 
brows the dews of youth still 
sparkled, gleefully revelled in 
the pomp and circumstance 
which allow him to make be- 
lieve he was a chieftain. He 
could go flower-bedecked and 
garlanded without comment in 
among his adopted subjects. 
He paid deference to Samoan 
codes of manners, a thing he 
had scorned to do in his native 
land. 

59 



A C R . O S S 

All his life he indulged in too 
few relaxations. Thegrim 
Scots divines, whose " damna- 
tory creed " Louis objected to 
so strongly, in their studies, 
we read, reserved a corner for 
rod and gun. In his library 
there was never a sign of sport- 
ing tools, not even a golf-club. 
He was not effeminate ; in fact, 
if " the man had been dowered 
with better health, we would 
have lost the author," says one 
speaker of him ; but he simply 
never let go the pen, and, 
doubtless, his singleness of 
purpose, his want of toil-rest- 
ing hobbies, was hampering to 
his health. Walking-tours, 
during which he was busy all 
the while taking mental notes 
for some article, was no brain 
holiday. In Samoa, he en- 
joyed the purest of pleasures, 

60 



THE SEAS 

gardening. " Nothing is so 
interesting," he says, in his 
Vailima Letters^ "as weeding, 
clearing, and path-making. It 
does make you feel so well." 
But despite warring with weeds 
and forest rides, in an enervat- 
ing country, he wrote persist- 
ently through the swooningly 
hot days of damp heat. 
"I have done my fiddling so 
long under Vesuvius, that I 
have almost forgotten to play, 
and can only wait for the erup- 
tion and think it long of com- 
ing," he wrote; and shortly 
after, in December 1894, it 
came and smote him down to 
the earth with merciful pain- 
lessness. His wife, his step- 
children, and his mother were 
beside him when, at the high- 
est water-mark his craftsman- 
ship had reached, he paid the 

61 



ACROSS 

debt to overstrain, and laid him 
down with a will. The closing 
act of his life's drama befitted 
his instinct for effective staging. 
As he lay shrouded in his na- 
tion's flag, the Samoans, who 
loved him, came to pay their 
tribute and take farewell of 
their honey-tongued playmate 
and counsellor, Tusitala. They 
counted it an honour to be 
asked to hew a track through 
the tropic forest up which they 
bore him to his chosen resting- 
place on the mountain top of 
Vaea, overlooking Vailima, 
There a table tombstone, like 
that over the martyrs' graves 
on the hills of home, marks 
where this kindly Scot is laid, 
with the Pacific for ever boom- 
ing his dirge. Samoa, hereto- 
fore, to most was but a speck 
on a great ocean of another 

62 



THE SEAS 

hemisphere. Stevenson trans- 
formed it into a "Mecca of 
the Mind," where pilgrims, 
bearing his name in remem- 
brance, send their thoughts to 
do reverence at that shrine 
where, 

" High on his Patmos of the Southern 
Seas, 
Our Northern dreamer sleeps," 

no longer separated from his 
own country and kindred by a 
world of waters, but, as another 
friend and poet said, divided 
from us now only by the un- 
bridged river of Death. 
Of his writings the list is long 
and varied, and forms a goodly 
heritage. Like himself, they 
are compounded of many parts, 
for he was essayist, poet, novel- 
ist, traveller, moralist, biogra- 
pher, and historian, and a 

63 



ACROSS 

Master of his Tools at all. Be- 
side his own books, through 
many of which we may make 
his intimate acquaintance, his 
letters, and others telling the 
story of his life, form many 
volumes. Stevenson advised 
every one to read often, not 
only the Waverley Novels, but 
the biography of good Sir Wal- 
ter. " His life," he affirmed, 
"was perhaps more unique 
than his work," and that re- 
mark applies to R. L. S. him- 
self, as well as to his great pre- 
decessor. Having burned his 
immature efforts when he was 
following his own '* private 
determination to be an author," 
when ostensibly studying engi- 
neering, there are but two 
pamphlets, printed in his boy- 
hood, which are not written 
when he had acquired his 

64 




FROM PAIXTING BY COUNT NERLI 



T H E ^ SEAS 

finished style. Louis' last crea- 
tion, Weir of Hermiston, he 
himself thought was his master- 
piece, and he was always his 
own surest and severest critic. 
The portrait of the judge on 
whom he modelled Hermiston, 
/. ^., Braxfield, was not in Stev- 
enson's advocate days be- 
queathed to the Parliament 
House, but he had seen it in a 
Raeburn Exhibition he re- 
viewed. He recollected the 
outward semblance of the man 
in his receptive memory till he 
resurrected Braxfield as Her- 
miston. The half-told tale is 
in itself a monument which, 
unfinished though it be, shows 
us how clever an artificer Louis 
had become. 

And what manner of man to 
the outward eye was this gyp- 
8ily-inclined descendant of 

65 



ACROSS 

square-headed Scottish engi- 
neers? With his dark eyes 
looking as if they had drunk in 
the sunshine in some southern 
land, his uncut hair, his odd, 
shabby clothes clinging to his 
attenuated frame, his elaborate 
manners and habit of gesticu- 
lating as he spoke, he was often 
mistaken for a starving musician 
or foreign mountebank. It is 
not surprising that continental 
officials doubted his passport's 
statement that he was a Briton. 
In France he was imprisoned, 
and he complains he could not 
pass a frontier or visit a bank 
without suspicion. "A slen- 
der, boyish presence, with a 
graceful, somewhat fantastic 
bearing, and a singular power 
of attraction in the eyes and a 
smile were the first things that 
impressed you," says his bi- 

66 



THE SEAS 

ographer. Like his mother, 
he remained to the end of his 
Hfc perennially young in ap- 
pearance and spirits. The bur- 
den of years never weighed 
him down or dimmed his out- 
look. His face kindled and 
flushed with pleasure when he 
heard of a doughty deed, a 
spice of wit, or some tale to his 
liking. Few drew him on can- 
vas in his lifetime, though he 
summered among artists. Sar- 
gent, in 1885, did a small full- 
length portrait of him, which 
*' is said to verge on caricature, 
and is in Boston. W.B.Rich- 
mond, R. A., about the same 
time, at Bournemouth, began 
another in oils, not much more 
than laid in in two sittings." 
Louis sat to an Italian, Count 
Nerli, in Samoa ; but in this 
last portrait he looks painfully 

67 



ACROSS 

haggard, reminding us of his 
own words, "the practice of 
letters is miserably harassing." 
Because of the too brilliant 
light elsewhere in Vailima, he 
was painted in a room which 
was close, and the air fatigued 
him. While sitting, he wiled 
away an hour by making 
doggerel lines all to rhyme with 
the artist's name, Nerli. The 
portrait was bought by a Scotch- 
woman travelling in New Zeal- 
and, where, after the author's 
death, it had remained unsold. 
His mother, on returning to 
Scotland when bereft of her 
boy, asked to see the picture 
again. She had disapproved of 
it in Samoa, as it was over true 
a likeness, representing him 
sadly emaciated. Seeing it 
again, she revoked her former 
judgment, and wished to pos- 

68 



THE SEAS 

sess it, but the purchaser also 
had grown to prize it. So it 
hangs in her drawing-room, 
near by where the Eildons stand 
sentinel over Scott's resting- 
place. This picture of him 
who lies on Vaea's crest looks 
down with a slightly quizzical 
expression, as if amused at 
finding himself ensconced in a 
place of honour in the house 
of strangers on Tweedside. 
^ Photographs there are in plenty 
of Stevenson, and one snap- 
shot, enlarged in the Edin- 
burgh Edition, recalls him 
looking up with " long, hatchet 
face, black hair, and haunting 
gaze, that follows as you move 
about the room." But his 
likeness was as difficult for the 
photographer, or the sun, to 
catch, as for the painter to put 
on canvas, for the peculiar fasci- 

69 



ACROSS 

nation of the living man lay in 
himself, in the elusive charm 
of his smile, and in his manner 
of speech. However, his con- 
temporaries have left their 
printed records of his appear- 
ance and his peculiar person- 
ality. Henley's perfect de- 
scription in verse is too well 
known to need quotation. 
Ugly, Stevenson called himself, 
but this was not so. He was 
original in looks and mind, his 
lank brown hair straggled over 
his high forehead, and framed 
his thin, high-cheeked, sallow, 
oval face. His brown eyes and 
full red lips gave a dash of 
colour to his features. His 
schoolmate, Mr. Baildon, says 
truly, " his eyes were always 
genial, however gaily the lights 
danced in them ; but about the 
mouth there was something of 

70 



THE SEAS 

trickery and mocking, as of a 
spirit that had already peeped 
behind the scenes of Life's pag- 
eant, and more than guessed its 
unrealities." 

Repose he never tasted of, for 
his zest in life, his adventurous 
inclination to explore, his in- 
satiable curiosity, kept him 
ever moving at topmost speed. 
To understand the mainspring 
which affected the man's char- 
acter — the machinery that sup- 
plied him with an inexhaustible 
nerve force and vitality — Mr 
Colvin explains, " besides hu- 
mour, which kept wholesome 
laughter always ready at his 
lips, was a perfectly warm, 
loyal, and tender heart, which, 
through all his experiments and 
agitations, made the law of 
kindness the one ruling law of 
his life." He marvelled, on his 

71 



ACROSS 

way through the Pilgrim'' s Prog- 
ress^ why the man with the 
muck-rake grovelled in straws 
and dust, and never looked up 
to the glittering crown held out 
for his acceptance. This mul- 
ish blindness puzzled the boy, 
and when he grew up, he 
opened the eyes, and illumined 
by his work and his example 
the dreary-hearted who wasted 
their opportunities, not seeing 
the number of beautiful things 
which made the world into a 
royal pleasance. With tune- 
ful words he persuaded those 
who plodded with dusty feet 
along the high-road to pause 
for a while and saunter among 
the greener fields of earth, and 
through the stimulating cour- 
age that shone through every 
chapter he wrote, he, like his 
sires, " the ready and the strong 

72 



THE SEAS 

of word," has, by his works, 
left Hghts to shine upon the 
paths of men. 



SPIRIT of the 
AGE SERIES 

IT Under this title it is the publishers' intention 
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achievement of the great spirits of the age in art, 
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IT Each bound in ornamented boards nuith paper 
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THE FIRST OF THE SERIES IS 

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Butterfly,' Wasp, Wit, Master of the Arts 
Enigma 

by Haldane Macfall 

"Ha, ha! This man knoius,^' was Whistler's 
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ENGLISH OPINIONS 

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% Special Edition of "fThistler" , containing 

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THE SECOND OF THE SERIES IS 

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BY EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON 
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OTHERS IN THE SERIES WILL BE ANNOUNCED 
FROM TIME TO TIME 

JOHN W. LUCE and COMPANY 

BOSTON AND LONDON 



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HIS PLAYS 

by Henry L. Mencken 
IF An exceedingly interesting and 
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IT Mr. Mencken deals with each 
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IT Issued in cloth luith paper labels, uniform 
•with Mr. Shaw's "On Going to Church," 
and his plays II Price $1.00 

ON GOING 
TO CHURCH 

BY G. BERNARD SHAW 

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"so stimulating to the world-wearied ob- 
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its pages may be read and re-read with 
constantly increasing interest" 

^ Bound in Cloth, paper labels \\ Price 75 cents 
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BOSTON AND LONDON 



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IF Issued in two volumes and containing 
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QY NO IMPORTANCE," "aN IDEAL HUS- 
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earnest" 

IT Speaking of the Wilde revival, the Bos- 
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his could never have come to Oscar Wilde 
living. It comes to him dead freely and 
ungrudgingly and deservedly. His poems 
are read wherever the English language is 
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heavy deckle - edge paper II Price $1.50 

1 Fifty Numbered copies, printed on Japan 
Vellum, II at $5.00 each 

JOHN W. LUCE and COMPANY 

BOSTON AND LONDON 



1 l%k 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATI 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 



